Ordinary Gweilo

When I opened my wallet I realized that my credit card was missing. 

After a few moments of panic, I remembered that I must have left it inside a self-service till.  Indeed I had – unfortunately it was 50 miles away in a different city (at a branch of the UK’s worst high street retailer). 

When I returned to the store, the manager asked me to choose from a selection of cards that had been left in the machine, which made me feel a little bit less foolish (though not much).  This was a few years ago, and contactless cards (and Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.) now make things easier.  But there was still that annoying message, which can be roughly translated as "Hey, someone is trying to steal something." 

Apparently Tesco have changed it to something less aggressive, but I still don't like machines talking to me, thanks all the same. 

It's taken a while, but now they are appearing all over Hong Kong, and in a surprising development the self-service tills recently installed in most ParknShop stores in Hong Kong keep quiet about what they think I might be stealing.  

It's not all good news.  ParknShop apparently think it would be amusing to make the customer identify any loose fruit and vegetables by searching through a series of flashcards that are placed next to the till.  Small children are, needless to say, attracted to them much as moths are to a bright light, with equally untidy results.  Wouldn't it be easier to just have images on the screen like everyone else?

So it's safe to say that self-service tills are here to stay.

Spare a thought, though, for Howard Schneider, who developed some of the earliest self-service tills, but who sold his company for a fraction of what it is worth today.  If you want to know more, this podcast from Planet Money is worth a listen.

And today's Cantonese is the name of that ubiquitous supermarket chain: 百佳 baak³ gaai¹ (which can be translated as "100s of good things").  No parking, no shopping.